It is known in the art to use a terminal system including a plurality of work stations with attached peripheral units, connected to a host over a communication link. These units are provided with specific computing intelligence for handling various tasks. Such a system tends to be expensive and complex.
One solution to these problems is presented in the published GB patent application No. GB2001462, inventor Briggs et al. In this document there is described a terminal system provided with a master terminal with computing facility, attached to a host over a first communication link, and a plurality of slave terminals attached to the master terminal over a second communication link. This system reduces the complexity of the slave terminals, however, the overall communication between the various units and the host will still be complex and the link between the master terminal and the host tends to be heavily loaded. This problem becomes especially evident if the terminal work stations are used in banking environments where a main controller in a host system is attached to a plurality of work stations over a relatively slow loop transmission link.